A festschrift narrating the career of Australian Marxisant Stuart Macintyre, evincing the effects of ‘commitment’ on professional study – however learned, surely limited and tendentious. An early historian of the British and Australian Communist parties, which pursuit was seen as groundbreaking because (modestly) critical, Macintyre moved on to Australian labor and government, and in as much as Marxist theories failed in history and they did in sociopolitics, then a Weberian sociology of the contemporary. He lamented the Hawke-Keating era didn’t go far enough in addressing utopian goals, criticizing ‘normative neoliberalism’, rejecting the search for ‘timelessness’. Effectively he and his student lodged the usual complaints of ‘winners and losers’, that unequal outcomes fall short of the general will. Macintyre was a ‘black armbander’ who controversially sought to put himself above the fray, a position which might have been more credible had he acknowledged the errors and outcomes of 20th-century communism.
Historiography
17. Himmelfarb, The New History and the Old (6 Nov 2016)
Essays criticizing the theoretical basis and methodology of ‘new history’, including social history, psychohistory, quantification, and work driven by socialist theory. Each violates the principle of deriving explanations of the past from its base of evidence. The social sciences, whatever their merits, are often unsuitable for considering the ‘things that really matter’ to a given topic. The opening chapters on social history (e.g., Annalisme) and socialist history are most persuasive, as there are several decades of output to evaluate. Interesting but inconclusive discussion of the idea of progress, which takes the reader toward the territory of philosophy of history.
18. Elton, The Practice of History (17 Nov 2016)
History exists distinct of the social sciences because it treats of particular people and events as they have changed over periods of time. The purpose of assessing dynamics is unlike disciplines which seeks to draw conclusions, even laws, from a static, measurable state of affairs. Further, the study of history is its own end, toward the understanding of what happened, rather than any analog or determinant of future events. History is rarely settled because new evidence appears and new ways of conceiving problems are formulated. But history is never relative: the past is dead. It is not the problems studied nor lessons learned but intellectual rigor of assessing evidence and explication that distinguishes the practitioner and the output. Evidence itself can never fulfill the job; while one must gather all he can, one must also criticize (evaluate) its contents and use imagination (investigative thinking) to assess the gaps and the misdirection. While there is a place for description and analysis, narrative is the highest form of the craft; the format will often be suggested by the problem.
12. Butterfield, George III and the Historians (26 Jun 2017)
Assesses the historiography of George III’s early reign — how he intended to govern from 1760-63, and whether it constituted a significant break from his Hanover predecessors. The contest between neo-historicist Whig and more overtly partisan Tory interpretations culminated in Whig ascendancy, until the arrival the Namierite school of ‘structured analysis’, which asserted behavior is explicable according to classifiable political types (i.e., MPs). Burke, as a contemporary naturally belonged to the Whigs, although he was ‘satisfied’ with subsequent reform and so able to turn against the persecutors of the French monarchy. Butterfield asserts history is ‘both story and study’ (pp. 294-295): readers shouldn’t be able to guess the outcome. Meanwhile, an individual’s deeds are to be assessed in the context of the ideas then held, and primary sources are valuably supplemented by external evidence and evaluation. As to the historian, he is to be diligent in search of new or novel evidence, responsible in the use of evidence, and the best presenter of it. No amount of learning can surmount deficient imagination.
14. Kagan, On the Origins of War (14 Aug 2019)
To identify elements that commonly cause global conflicts, studies the Peloponnesian and Punic wars, World Wars 1 and 2, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite the modern taste for social-science explanations such as irrational behavior or systemic competition (e.g., Kennedy’s belief miscalculation launched the Great War), Thucydides’ precept holds: wars commence from honor, fear, or interest. The historian of war ought to hold out hopes of statesmanship surmounting avoidable conflict: some wars are just and must be resolved, but many can be put off, sometimes through concession but more often by deterrence. There is a typology of treaties (e.g., victor’s peace, punishment without destruction, and mutual agreement that continuing costs surmount the gains) which are the starting point for defense of peace.
Peloponnesian War: The Spartans’ honor required defending its coalition and discouraging defections to Athens. Archidamus failed to stem his fractious allies, who were more like NATO than the common analogy of the Soviet bloc. Pericles sought to demonstrate Athens was a sated power, and through defensive strategy to show traditional Spartan warfare could not prevail, but lacked a credible offensive deterrent (such as encouraging slave rebellion).
World War 1: Germany undid Bismarck’s attempt to demonstrate its satisfaction through the belligerence of Kaiser Wilhelm and his cabinet. The pursuit of naval power and colonies was a point of honor (not interest) which threatened Britain’s traditional objectives to control the seas and the Low countries and well as to preserve a continental balance of power.
2d Punic War: Rome struck a poor peace, its Senate failing to ratify the first treaty and seeking a larger indemnity, both of which served to inflame Carthage. Additionally, Rome carelessly conceded vital interests, such as the security of Saguntum or defending the Ebro border.
World War 2: Versailles was not unduly harsh, but the Germans didn’t believe they’d lost, and the UK didn’t see itself as responsible for enforcement. Its economic power flagging, Britain was persuaded by traumatized, rationalist intellectuals to trust in the League of Nations. Well before Hitler’s rise, the Germans had shaken off occupation of the Rhineland, renegotiated reparations, and begun rearming (in cooperation with Soviet Russia). Subsequently, Chamberlain replaced moral disarmament with military unpreparedness as a reason for appeasement. France too, cowering behind the Maginot Line, lacked the will to defend Eastern Europe.
Cuban Missile Crisis: Geoffrey Blainey observes wars start when rivals can’t agree the allotment of power. Both sides agreed the US was stronger but Khrushchev perceived Kennedy wouldn’t act on it. The Bay of Pigs, disastrous Vienna summit, and erection of the Berlin Wall as well as Soviet premier’s skill at strategic deception and bluster shook the American president. In belatedly exposing the Soviet missile gap, Kennedy pushed his rival into a corner without intending to keep him there. Similarly, the warning against deployment was too late for prevention, too precise to explain away their discovery. Khrushchev underestimated the pressure on Kennedy to act, just as Chamberlain had been forced by opinion to confront Hitler. (The US cabinet saw Cuba as a domestic matter not a military problem, ruing that a less precise warning would have allowed the administration to eventually explain the missiles were no threat.) Kennedy contemplated trading missiles in Turkey for Cuba very early and volunteered the terms. Khrushchev accepted the concession, taking advantage of a weak player.
17. Hexter, Historians (26 Sep 2019)
A collection of essays treating leading inter- and postwar historians including Carl Becker, Fernand Braudel, and JGA Pocock. As in other works, Hexter’s discussions of strength and weakness reveals his primary point only late in the game. Becker is shown to have recanted the relativism of Everyman a Historian, on the impetus of Nazi nihilism: ‘in the long run all values are inseparable from love of truth and disinterested search for it’. Braudel, whose remaking of the French academy is praised, could not connect the durable phenomena (e.g., geography) with rapid change, in part because he ignored law and custom. A ‘revolution’ is not always successful, Hexter, writes, but nonetheless reveals profound currents. Puritanism pressed Elizabeth but was diffusive not polarizing of England governance because of the peers-gentry and court-country axes. Although Hexter is strongest regarding England, the best chapter treats Pocock’s Machiavellian Moment. To know the political language of an era is to understand what words were intended to mean. Pocock shows the transition, beginning in 15th century Florence, from valuing stability, hierarchy, and universality to republicanism, patriotism, equality, utopia, etc. Florentine thought followed Aristotle but the ‘Anglosphere’, where next the revolution surfaced, grafted a view of God’s elect onto Italian humanism. Why? Hexter contends Pocock didn’t go far enough: in showing that Machiavelli and company demonstrated the fundamental condition of liberty is participation in public life, without which civic virtue can never be realized, Pocock omitted considering the alternate definition of liberty – freedom from state control. The opposition of positive liberty and negative liberty (‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’, as enunciated by Berlin) has a long history in the West. Positive liberty is Aristotelian; negative liberty is Roman (i.e., Stoic). Positive liberty was lost in the Dark Ages, resurfacing in Renaissance Florence and then Stuart and Georgian England. The rise of commerce upended classical conceptions of positive liberty, which presumed smaller, agrarian society. Its theorists include Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison. Whereas negative liberty is unconcerned with social structure – not who should govern but what should be the limits of power? Pocock ought to have raised new questions of the duality which are entailed by his showing the trajectory of positive liberty. Elsewhere, Hexter notes historians are obliged to police themselves, unlike scientists, for their researches are more difficult to check; the practitioners themselves best police the thesis and identify new horizons.